A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Vultures of Capitol Hill

Apparently there’s no need for a massive criminal investigation. Congress has already discovered what was behind the Boston Marathon bombing — the sequester.

Even before doctors had finished treating the wounded, several senior Democrats told Politico that “the attack shows why Congress should’ve stopped automatic spending cuts from taking hold in March.” In particular, House minority whip Steny Hoyer pointed to the bombing as evidence that “we need to invest in our security” and not “pursue any irrational policies of cutting the highest priorities and lowest priorities by essentially the same percentage.” Democratic Policy Committee chairman Xavier Becerra went on to claim that the sequester had also hindered the response to the bombing. “We know that first responders are being cut,” he claimed, although there is little real evidence of such cuts. “We know that community police [are] being cut. We know that health-care services, especially emergency health-care services, are being cut.” Anonymous White House sources leaked that they were concerned about “the impact of the sequester on the short-term capabilities and long-term operations of homeland security.”

Former congressman Barney Frank went even further, linking the bombing to tax cuts and the entire movement for limited government, pointing out that “no tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover. One imagines one of the Tsarnaev brothers suddenly announcing, “They’ve just cut federal spending by less than 2 percent. Quick, go get the bombs.”

“Politicizing a tragedy is not just bad manners, but bad policy.”

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once famously said that you should never let a crisis go to waste. President Obama and congressional Democrats have been quick to follow his advice. One need go no further than the president’s exploitation of the Newtown tragedy to see this principle in operation. There’s no reason to believe that there won’t be an attempt to use this horrible event similarly.

Not that Republicans have been immune to the temptation. Defense hawks are already seeing Boston as an excuse to avoid making scheduled defense cuts. But most defense spending has nothing to do with fighting the type of terrorism that we saw in Boston. What are we going to do: Fire a drone missile into Boston? Invade Dagestan?

Others have already called for more surveillance and new restrictions on privacy or civil liberties. But before we install a camera on every street corner, impose new gun-control measures, or censor the Internet, shouldn’t we at least pause to consider whether any of those things would have prevented this attack?

Even more of a stretch are efforts by opponents of immigration reform to link the Boston bombers to the newly introduced immigration bill. Regardless of one’s position on the bill (I generally support it), linking it to Boston looks like opportunism more than policy.

Opponents of immigration reform claim that they favor legal immigration, and that it is only illegal immigration that they are against on principle. But the Tsarnaevs immigrated legally under the current system. It appears the FBI may have dropped the ball in the case of Tarmerlin Tsarnaev, but that occurred long after the Tsarnaevs entered the country.

Moreover, it is hard to think of a system more injurious to national security than one that keeps millions of foreigners hidden in the shadows with no way to track or identify them.

Requiring immigrants to undergo security, criminal, and health checks as part of the process of regularization can only enhance our security. And allowing immigration officials, border agents, and officials to focus on criminals and potential terrorists, rather than trying to round up otherwise law-abiding unauthorized immigrants, would seem to be a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

Perhaps it is the need to make sense out of the senseless that prompts us to try to turn tragedies into a cause. And certainly we should learn what lessons we can in order to prevent such events in the future. But in the same way that survivors of personal tragedy are advised to avoid making important decisions for at least a year, perhaps politicians should avoid politicizing national tragedies for at least that long.